Sunday, 6 September 2009

As a medical association in Spain has recently communicated to the press, more than anything there seems to be an epidemic of fear going on. As I am currently living in Portugal, I do not know what the situation is in other countries, but I can tell you how the situation is here. Every news bulletin starts with more news about the flu, even though no one has died here yet. It then finishes with a previously recorded warning on how one should wash hands frequently and keep 1m away from other people while talking to them, quite an ordeal in a country where the common greeting is a couple of kisses in the cheek. In addition, we have ambulances going around with the paramedics dressed as in the photo, right out of films like ‘Outbreak’. Now, most people seem to assume that because I have just graduated with a Biology degree that I should know everything there is to know about the current flu. Besides the generic question ‘So, what do you think about this flu thing?’, I have had some more specific questions, from ‘I heard that it is impossible for this combination of genes to happen in nature, surely this must have been created by evil scientists with corporative interests?’ to ‘This virus is called H1N1, the 1918 pandemic virus was also H1N1, are we all going to die of Spanish flu?’. I try to explain people that at uni we are taught how to get informed about things, rather than becoming specialist on every single biological problems; and that frankly I am so fed up of hearing about this flu that I couldn’t be bothered to look it up. However, I think the hysteria might be affecting me, probably because I’ve just read the book Blindness (if you have read it/watched the film you will know why). So I decided to interrupt my holidays-away-from-science to read a bit about this topic, and thought I would tell you some of my findings.

My first port of call was the website of the World Health Organisation, usually a reliable source for information. I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of over-dramatic information. There is of course a whole section dedicated to this flu, right in the home page, but the answers given in the FAQs seem quite sensible. It tells us that 2009 A(H1N1) is spread as the normal flu, and that the current worries as based on the fact that being a virus which never circulated in humans before, there is no, or very little, immunity. In addition, as stated in their website, the virus is spreading fast in young people (10-45), from a majority of mild cases to some serious illnesses, the majority of which in patients with underlying conditions. The recommendations of the WHO are to take pain killers and drink loads of fluids if you have the flu. And only contact the medical services if you have serious symptoms like shortness of breath, or if the fever lasts for longer than 3 days. Quite unlike what recently happened in Portugal. When a man who had travelled to Britain was diagnosed with this flu, he saw his house invaded by doctors who quickly took him away to a hospital and confined the whole family to their house. Without telling them what to do or when they could leave.

Anyway, I then thought it would be a good idea to read some information from journals, a bit more scientific and hopefully less dramatic source of news. However, as you know, I am currently unable to access most papers, as I am in between universities and am yet to be provided with a username in my new institution. So what follows is based on a couple of papers I could access, and is by no means comprehensive.

As an introduction, some information from the Virology handouts we were given last October. Influenza viruses are RNA viruses that have a segmented genome (8 segments/genome). The glycoprotein spikes, haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) are important in the entrance of the virus in the host cells. There are 15 known HA and 9 NA serotypes, and their combination provides the name that we see for the viruses such as H1N1. Birds and pigs are important reservoirs for genetic and antigenically diversity and reassortment in these viruses. In particular pigs, as their cells can be infected by both avian and human influenza viruses, making them nice ‘mixing pots’.

In July this year Garten et al., published a paper in Science in which they characterised the 2009 A(H1N1) virus both antigenically and genetically. They start the paper by giving a small introduction on the influenza pandemics of the last century, and how we got from those to the current 2009 A(H1N1). Then it goes on to characterise the actual viruses. The closest ancestral gene for each of the eight segments seems to have a swine origin, although having originally come from avians and sometimes humans in different occasions. This is quite interesting, as swine influenza viruses had not, until now, caused much disease or been incredibly good at human-human transmission. As the authors point out, this virus probably had been circulating for a while in pigs, unnoticed due to lack of monitoring.

Analysis of the virus genome showed that none of the molecular signatures of increased transmissibility or virulence of A(H1N1) viruses can be found in this strain, and that functionally important receptor binding sites on HA do not differ from classic swine influenza viruses. No markers were also found that indicate adaptation to the human host or features of previous pandemic virus. The main important difference seems to be a genetic marker for resistance to adamantine antivirals, but the virus still seems to be sensitive to the other type of antivirals, the neuraminidase inhibitors. So, this study concludes, we must be worried about this virus firstly because we don’t really know what makes it good at replicating in humans, and secondly because it has a genetic composition not seen before, so we don’t really know what to expect.

I then went on to read a couple of papers regarding studies done in mammal models such as ferrets (apparently classic models for influenza studies) and mice.

The first study was published in Science also in July, by Maines et al. This post is becoming quite long already, so I’ll just summarise their results (based on 3 independently isolated 2009 A(H1N1) viruses as compared with a seasonal influenza strain). They basically inoculated 106 p.f.u in ferrets and monitored different indicators such as body weight, viral titres, direct and indirect transmissibility, etc. The main conclusion from the study was that 2009 A(H1N1) caused higher morbidity (weight loss, etc, depending on which virus isolate), showed, unlike seasonal flu, high viral titres in the lower respiratory tract or the intestine, but that it was less efficient at indirect transmission (putting healthy ferrets in cages near to inoculated animals).

The second animal study I looked at was published online by Nature, in what they call a ‘near final version’. They also used virus isolated from infected humans, though not all of which were the same as in the Science paper. They studied the effect of these viruses in mice, macaques, ferrets and pigs, though not all of the virus isolates seem to have been used in all of the experiments. They also looked at more indicators, such as pro-inflammatory cytokines, lung pathology, etc. In ferrets the results were similar to those of the Science paper, except that this time indirect transmission was successful. In mice and macaques, the 2009 A(H1N1) virus seems to be worse than the seasonal virus (at least one of the isolates that they seem to mostly use throughout, CA04) although according with which criteria varies with the model. The inoculated pigs were asymptomatic, explaining why the virus had not been noticed before in this animal.

So, what are the conclusions I could get, overall, from these three studies? Overall it seems that the 2009 A(H1N1) virus is worse than the seasonal influenza viruses in mammalian models. However, how much worse is probably hard to say. I am not familiar at all with viral studies, so it is hard for me to critically analyse these studies, but it seems to me that in most cases the n numbers were quite small (n=3 in some cases in the Nature study), but this is perhaps not surprising, as they must have been quite quick studies, considering the current need to understand this new virus. And, as it is probably the case in most animal studies in general, I reckon the doses used were probably much higher than what humans would be exposed to in the real world. In addition, there is always the question on how well do these animal models really reflect what happens in humans.

In any case, it seems that so far these studies indicate that 2009 A(H1N1) is, in these models, worse than seasonal flu. Whether it is as bad as some of the pandemics that have been affecting us in the last 100 years it is unknown. The other worry is of course that the virus might evolve into something much more dangerous. Though all the virus isolates obtained so far tend to be quite similar, 5 minor genome variants have already been detected. Restricting the spread of the virus, even if it is not so bad right now, might be a good way of preventing it from acquiring any more deadly features. Whether this data justifies the measures being taken by most government, that is really, as PHD comics puts it so well, beyong the scope of my area of study. I will leave that to those who study the spread of pandemics and know of population health. I think we have had enough speculation for one disease.

Contributors

We are geneticists and biochemists, alumni of the University of York (2009), now doing PhDs at the Universities of Cambridge, Leeds, Oxford and Vermont. We aim to bring to your attention interesting science, whether it is making headlines or not, referencing the original peer-reviewed research as often as possible.